More art is sold during Holidays than at any other time of the year.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to sell art during the Holidays! Having a passive approach is one of the biggest mistakes you can make as an art seller – if not the biggest. Let’s get into how to prepare and begin sending weekly emails to make the holiday seasons successful for your art business.
 

Holiday Potential

And no…we’re not just talking about the obvious Holiday – Christmas.

Nope, the Holiday season doesn’t end when December does! Right around the corner is Valentine’s Day, followed by Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and more.

A ton of art is sold on and around these holidays. If you have been missing out on this party, I sincerely hope this post kicks you into gear so you NEVER miss out on it again.

We’re stressing the importance of this, because “making the party” is likely far more consequential than you think.

Many people in the art industry fail to realize that during and around all of these holidays, the leading art retailers are using juicy offers to syphon demand for art completely out of the market for a 4-6 month period.

This means they are trying to find anyone who has thought of buying art for the past few months, or who has plans to potentially buy art in the new year, and are using juicy offers to get these people to buy from them now.

Once this type of customer buys the art they needed, they are off the market – they’re gone. Which means neither you, nor anyone else, will be able to capture another sale from them whether online or in person.

The impact of this is so profound that it affects every artist, photographer, and art gallery, as well as the print studios and photo labs who serve these customers. Nobody is immune, and the only way to thwart it will be to actually throw in your chips and start participating in it.

Which means you need to start sending emails now.

Look to the Leaders

Art.com is already promoting holiday sales, are you?

Make no mistake about it, the leading online art retailers, such as Art.com, Saatchi Art, and UGallery.com have already kicked up their email marketing for the holidays. Their emails will become more frequent and aggressive as we get closer to Christmas, and on two days in particular – Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

On that note, go subscribe to their emails so you can understand the types of offers and the visual presentation that consumers will be seeing. We’ve done so and reported on what we found in this blog post.

These big companies will email far more often than you likely can or should at this point, and that’s okay.

Let’s look at the minimum we recommend you do – our list of “No Matter What”-s.

The Bare Minimum

1. Get your subscribers thinking about buying

In advance of Black Friday, send out at least 2 emails announcing some new images or categories of images, preferably once per week (this means you need to start now!)

This will “warm” your prospects up and get them thinking about your awesome images, hopefully getting them to your website to look around. What we really want to happen here is to “imprint” some images in their mind that they will recall once you send out the great offer a few weeks later.

Hopefully, this is when they’ll be saying, “Aha! I’m going to go back and buy that now!” and that’s exactly what you want.

You may even want to tease the upcoming Black Friday sale, so they are waiting for it. This might cause them to spend more time on your site finding what they want, asking their spouse what they like, etc. — all because they know their chance to get a discount is coming.

2. Send out an offer on Black Friday (November 27)

Make it juicy, this should be one of your biggest sales of the year, so 10% off isn’t going to cut it.

Having a clear and quick expiration on emails is key, so make sure they know the offer expires end of day Sunday.

3. Send out an offer on Cyber Monday (November 30)

On Cyber Monday, extend the same offer (if it was successful) or change it up a bit.

This offer should expire end of day Monday.

4. Stay on top of sales all the way through Christmas

Send an offer once per week (try to change the details up) until a few days before Christmas.

As with anything else, try some different things out, monitor the results, and adjust your offer accordingly. If you’re not seeing much response to flat percentage discounts, it may be time to think out of the box on how to boost sales. For that, we have plenty of resource and features built right into our platform, as we discussed in our post 20 Critical Features to Sell Art Online and Raise Conversion Rates.

5. Get Ready for Valentines Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Independence Day, etc.

Our customers here at Art Storefronts see huge sales boosts during this time. Of course, this is only happening with those who are doing what we advise in this article.

Wrapping Up

This is by no means a comprehensive email strategy for a time of every Holiday, as the creative opportunities you have at your disposal are endless. Nonetheless, we sincerely hope this gets you fired up, and that you act right away and never miss a Holiday opportunity again.

Even if you are brand new to email marketing, we see this as a great opportunity to work out the kinks so that you’re fully prepared for a more aggressive run when the next Holiday rolls around.